The Port Phillip Bay Coastal Hazard Assessment (PPBCHA) is a Victorian state-funded initiative designed to support the management of natural, cultural and economic assets in the coastal areas of greater Melbourne and the surrounding municipalities. The PPBCHA contains both scientific and community capacity-building components. Here, we provide an overview of the scientific component, which aims to quantify coastal hazards across three broad themes: inundation (flooding), erosion and groundwater, under both current and future climate scenarios.

The first stage of the scientific component was a gap analysis that synthesised relevant existing information and data, and identified critical information gaps, and was used to refine the project design.  For the second stage of the project, a wave-flow coupled unstructured mesh numerical model of Port Phillip Bay, as well as surrounding estuaries and a large portion of the Bass Strait was implemented.  This model has been utilised to create a 35-year hindcast and 20-year time slices of future sea level rise scenarios. The timeseries and event statistics from the bay-wide hindcast and future scenarios will be used to inform various inundation, erosion and groundwater local component models and analyses. Synthesis of all of the information (from the bay-wide hydrodynamic model and the local inundation, erosion and groundwater local component models and analyses) will be provided via a number of decision support tools.

A brief overview of coastal processes important to coastal inundation (flooding), erosion and groundwater hazards within Port Phillip Bay will be presented.  Pertinent findings of the gap analysis, mean and extreme event statistics from the bay-wide wave-flow model, and how this information will be utilised in the local component models will also be presented.